Improved wash-board



- jections a a and intermediate hollows or de NITED STATES PATENT OFFICE..

NELSON HOMES, OF LAONA, NEW YORK.

IMPROVED WASH-BOARD.

Specilication forming part of Letters Patent No. 47,206, dated April 1l, 1865.

To all whom t may concern:

Be it known that I, NELsoN HOMES, of La ona, in the county ot Chautauqua and State of New York, have invented a certain new and useful Improvement in Wash-Boards, and I do hereby declare that the following is a full and exact description thereof, reference being had to the accompanying drawings, making part of this specitication. Y

Figure lis a perspective view of my improved wash-board resting in a tub; Fig. 2, a central longitudinal Vvertical section of the same; Fig. 3, a plan of aportion of the washing-bed, on an enlarged scale; Fig. 4, an edge view oi one ofthe corrugated strips or bars forming the washingbed, detached, and showing the spring or elasticity of the same.

Like letters of reference indicate corresponding parts in all the tigures.

A variety of washboards with the bed made of wood has long been employed. In the oldest device in common use the bed is formed ot' a sin gle, stilil board, corrugated transversely. In another a series of stili' beaded rollers, placed side by side, with the beads alternating, is employed 5 and still in a third, a sort of honeycomb arrangement is used, having cavities and ridges in a single stift board. But in all these there are objections, the most important of which are that they are stift' and inelastic, and do no not retain the water upon their surfaces sufficiently long to perform the washing to advantage. It is the object of my invention to obviate these difticulties by producing a washboard made up of strips or bars with plane edges, situated/ closely together, so as to prevent water escaping through, and corrugated in such a manner that the ridges of one bar will alternate with those of the next, &c., so as to form cells to retain the water to the best advantage, and so arranged as to produce an elastic surface.

As represented in the drawings, A is a frame of any ordinary or convenient construe tion for supporting the washing-bed. This bed is made up of a series of slats or bars, B B B, sawed from a board or the block in such a manner as to leave plane square edges, which, when placed side by side in the bed longitudinally, leave n0 openin g between, but merely a joint, as shown most clearly in Fig. 3. These bars or strips are corrugated transversely, so as to leave alternate ridges or prosuppl y.

pressions, b b and when the bars are situated side by side in the bed the ridges of one bar come opposite the depressions ofthe next, or, in other words, the ridges of one bar alternate with those of the next. The ends of the slats or bars may be secured in the frame of the wash-board in any desirable manner, being represented in the drawings as having bear-V ings c c, which enter grooves in the crosspieces d d.

l secure several advantages in the arrangement above described. I avoid the use of a stili', unbroken,.unyielding board, such a-s the old device in common use, and employ in its place an elastic bed,which is still as tight, or nearly so, as the other, as the plane edges of the slats it closely together, and thus effect ually prevent the water drawn up with the clothing from running through. The narrowness of the slats alloT each to spring independently, as indicated by red lines, Fig. 4. [n this respect, also, the superiority ot' my arrangement over the waslrboard made lup of beaded rounds or bars is manifest, for in the latter the large openings between the beads '.Ihe wash-board composed of the planeed ged slats or bars B B, iitting closely together, so as `to prevent the passage of water through, andhaving a necessary degree of elasticity, said slats being provided with corrugations a a b b, so arranged that the corrugations of any one slat alternate with the next,

substantially as and for the purposes herein set forth.

In witness whereof I `have hereunto signed my name in the presence of two subscribing witnesses.

NELSON HOMES.

Witnesses:

FREEMAN LAKE, E. D. HOMES. 

